“I wish we could put a stop to all this junk mail!” Simplia said flipping through a good, solid inch of envelopes and flyers and post cards that got crumpled into the mailbox. “I wish you could just get the mail people you know really send to you.”

“Well, that would be fine with me. What’s so bad about beggars having horses, anyway?” Simplia asked. “Or, at least, horsepower? It’s the American dream, after all.”

“But wishing can get you in trouble, too,” Sagacia cautioned, on the watch, as usual, lest something go wrong.

“I know, but it’s really just something people say; nobody really expects anything to happen, that their wish would come true, that is.” Simplia said still shuffling through the mail.

“Good Heavens,” Sagacia replied. “You know what Mary Poppins said about making wishes you don’t believe in, don’t you? ‘Why bother to wish then?’ she said. ‘I’d call that a waste of time,’ she said.”

“Well, that was Mary Poppins,” Simplia replied. “And far be it from me to disagree with Mary Poppins, but I think people say they wish for something just to express a viewpoint without believing for a moment that their wish will come true. You certainly didn’t think I believed junk mail would stop when I wished it would, did you?”

Sagacia shook her head. “Not really,” she smiled.

“Oh, look! Here’s a letter for Vasilisa.” Simplia said, handing one envelope toward Sagacia and setting the rest on the table.

“It looks like it’s from a reader of her syndicated advice column,” Sagacia said, reaching for the envelope, “but it couldn’t be! It didn’t arrive magically; it came by regular mail.”

“Sure, but the post office can look that up and send it on,” Sagacia shrugged. “They probably know all the zip codes by heart, anyway.”

“And the digits in our address are switched around!”

“Hmm.” Sagacia said. “Let me see.”

Simplia handed the missive back to her.

Sagacia studied the envelope, front and back. “Well, it is odd, at least,” she said.

“Yes, and it is the magical third day of the month,” Simplia pointed out.

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to open it and find out,” Sagacia mumbled.

“No,” Simplia agreed. “It woudn’t.” She trembled, restraining her eager hands from snatching the letter away and tearing it open.

“So, . . .” Sagacia said pensively, turning the letter over in her hands.

“Open it!” Simplia demanded! “Just open it! Just look and see!”

Sagacia hesitated, but only for a moment, then she peeled the flap up and took out the letter. She read:

Dear Vasilisa the Wise:

I have recently received bunches of birthday wishes on Facebook, and it made me think about wishes in fairy tales. You know: someone is granted three wishes? or one wish? And they think it will bring about some goal, but then something gets twisted around and their wish is foiled? Sometimes the wish has a strange result because of the way they worded it, or sometimes the wish turns back upon itself and has the opposite result from what was intended. Sometimes a third wish nullifies the first two.

(Or do they? Perhaps it is just the fairy tales flitting past my head at the moment. Are there fairy tales in which the wishes actually do work to the desired end?)

As a child, I used to say to myself, “If I had a wish, I would wish for more wishes.” Would that work by the supernatural laws of Fairyland?

So, just to gather some substance about this topic, I wonder if you could help me find some stories where wishes were granted (or not) and also think about how they come out. Is it the wish that makes that story a Fairy Tale, or is it something else?

–Wishing in Washington

“So, Wishing in Washington wants witnesses,” Sagacia said.

“We could use some help on this one, Simplia said, grabbing her parasol. “Let’s go ask our magical friends at the Fairy Tale Lobby about wishes! Which tales have them? What role do they play? Do they provide the magic a fairy tale needs, or are they just an interesting aside?

Friday evening, July 31 at 5:45at the Kona Grill in Country Club Plaza.Take the hotel shuttle to Country Club Plaza; Kona Grill is three doors east of Plaza III, facing Brush Creek. Dinner Menu.RSVP in your comment below or email Mary Grace: mgk_at_talesandlegends.net

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About mary grace ketner

My lawyer tells me I should not put the words "Fairy Tale Lobbyist" on my business cards but rather "Representative" and "National Fairy Tale Association." But I'm not, and there isn't one. Even so, I don't think I'm going it alone.

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3 thoughts on “If wishes were horses . . .”

I am sitting here in the Fairy Tale Lobby smoking my pipe, and besides Adam, who is staring out the window, there is no one else around. Where is everyone?

Oh, yes. Kansas. What did Dorothy tell Toto about that?

Since I am not off to Kansas (sigh,) I am the one with the time to compile a “wish” list.

Confining myself to perusing the Grimms’ book that starts off “In olden time, when wishes still helped…” I come up with the following:

The Fisherman and his Wife
Cinderella
The Seven Ravens
Thumbling (as Adan said)
Juniper Tree
Brier Rose
Snow White
The Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn
Three Feathers
Pink Flower
Brother Lustig
The Poor Man and the Rich Man
The Gnome
The Raven
Hans the Hedgehog
The Jew in the Throne Bush
White Bride and Black Bride

And I may well have missed one or two. I did not include wishing-devices unless they were wished for, nor did I include things that were granted rather than wished. This last can be a fine line.

Roughly, I see three categories (we should not be surprised, there is the magical three again.) One: wishes for a child, which usually produces questionable result such as a hedgehog. Two: wishes for material things for the purposes of wealth and control, which often get taken away and need to be recovered. And three: wishes that are wasted (be careful what you wish for).

Do wishes always have to be phrased with “I wish”? The first thing that comes to mind is the Tom Thumb/Thumbling/Thumbnickel type of tale in which a couple wants a child so bad that they don’t care what they’d get. The version collected by Franz Xaver von Schonwerth (“Thumbnickel”) states the specific wish as “We want a child, even if it’s no bigger than a thumb!”

IT HAPPENS EVERY MONTH!

Someone in distress over a Fairy Tale theme or problem writes for help from Vasilisa the Wise via her syndicated newspaper column. But Vasilisa--well, she's stuck in a little hut on chicken feet until she finishes picking out the dirt from poppy seeds, or at the widow’s house in town, spinning flax into linen to make a shirt for the czar, or she’s at a banquet making swans come out of her sleeve. She just can't attend to questions right now, so she enlists the aid of her two simpleton friends who feed the cat and collect her mail. They can’t really help, either. Not by themselves.

Fortunately, they know others who can! Magical friends like you, who care about fairy tales and storytelling, who have accumulated experience, observations, and ponderings to share, and who might take a moment to post a response to help a correspondent solve a conundrum.

On the magical third day of each month, Vasilisa's mail magically appears, the Simpletons open it (with permission), read the question and ask for help answering it. Then they gather responses, yours and others', and distribute them every week or so to inspire further thought. As if by magic, when the third of the next month rolls in, so does another question! Here’s what the Simpletons hope you’ll do: Read the question then (a) post your response as a comment on the blog itself, (b) reply to it on the Storytell Listserv, or (c) write in your answer on The Fairy Tale Lobby Facebook page.

The Fairy Tale Lobby is a "Discussion Group" of the National Storytelling Network, and this blog is both the way we discuss fairy tale topics and a means of preserving your wisdom. Regardless of whether or not you are a member of NSN, if you value fairy tales, if you defend them in the real world, if you advocate their greater use, if you occasionally even lobby on their behalf, you will feel right at home here.

Your hosts at the Fairy Tale Lobby, besides Simplia and Sagacia who carry out all the communications, fluff the pillows on the Chesterfield, brew the tea, butter the gate, and bake the crumpets, are Megan Hicks and Mary Grace Ketner. They are the ones who enjoy and appreciate your ideas insights most of all.

This month’s question:

Dear Vasilisa the Wise --

Are you really as good as all that? Are you really wise? Or just cagey? When you're wearing your Czarina hat, are you genuinely concerned about the well-being of your subjects? Or do you just want to pacifying them enough that they don't foment unrest? In your stories, as an innocent, you're too good to be true. I'm pretty unschooled in fairy tales, so I wonder if there are many stories about you as an woman married to the Czar.

Usually the people at the top of the heap are there either as innocuous place holders or as the source of the conflict that winds the story up. Bad rulers are deposed in fairy tales. Do their usurpers then become the next wave of bad rulers?

Right now, I could use a story about a good monarch. A wise queen. A generous rich man. An honest advisor to the king. Not just a placeholder in the story. Not just a cameo role. I'm looking for a prime mover. Help me out here, would you? I'm growing

Cynical in Cynghordy

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